Chapter 33

"Dere's a boy here, at d'front door, Miz," Moses announced while Anne was at breakfast. She picked up her stubby pistol, primed the pan, snapped it closed, took a deep breath, drew the flint all the way back and went to the door, feeling her gorge rise, finger on the trigger.

The lean boy doffed his hat and made a small bow. "Caleb Dulany, ma'am. I'm looking for my uncle, thought you might've seen him. Macalister Sinclair's his name. He's in uniform I think."

"Come in," she said calmly and led the boy through the house and to the kitchen, putting down her weapon on the way after easing off the hammer. They stepped onto the back porch, and Anne peeled the canvas from the body's head, looking away quickly from the staring eyes and startled rictus.

The boy nodded and licked his lips, blinking at her. "That's him. What happened?"

"He came at me with a big, long sword; it's in the mud out front somewhere, threatened to kill me, understand, and I shot him. That's what happened. I shot him. Had no choice. I'm sorry." Briefly, she wondered if she actually was sorry; she did not feel sorry.

The young man knelt, touched the body's chest with his forefinger and then covered him back up. "I'll have to fetch a wagon." He blinked at the red-headed young woman, finding it hard to believe. "You shot him?"

Anne nodded.

"Thank you, ma'am," he said with another bow and then hurried away.

After she finished her usual morning drink of goat's milk and chicory-flavored coffee, Anne went to look at her patch of plowed earth without even a glance at the corpse and then watched the Rileys frame out her necessary which, as she had insisted, would be a two-holer, a small one for children and the other opening full-sized. She had remembered being young and fearing she might fall in. It would be better than the old one in that it was closer to the house as well as a good bit deeper.

If the brothers noticed the canvas-covered body, they didn't mention it. She also got them to finish tearing down the dilapidated storage ell and they said there might be some timbers they could reuse. Back in the kitchen, she had a long talk with Miranda, and the young slave promised to see if she could find a local family that needed a housemaid or lady's maid. She agreed that she was not much use in the garden. When Anne asked how she would seek a position, Miranda just smiled.

Then Anne sat at her bedroom desk and put down on paper all she could recall of the steps needed to raise tobacco and of the warnings she had heard. She underlined those, forcing her mind to the task and away from the body and that fearful grin. She decided to buy some more seed, since the small packet she had been given did only half her large seedbed, and she really had no idea how many seedlings she would need. She added other items to her growing list, thought about trading Miranda for a fieldhand and wrote an advertisement for the weekly newspaper. Ready money was becoming a problem.

With that done, she sat so the sun was over her shoulder and picked up her thick, half-finished novel and lost herself in a confusion of deceptions and house parties among the London well-to-do and the adventures of Clarissa, a girl who had inherited property and almost married the wrong man. The sun was high, the book was closed on her finger, and she was nodding when Moses came to fetch her.

At the back porch she found the young Dulany boy and Philip Wells. She watched them wrap the now-limp body in a large piece of new canvas and place it carefully in the back of a fancy surrey where the unsheathed sword and muddy hat lay. Wordlessly, the boy knuckled his forehead, climbed up and drove off. Philip came and took her hand, and she leaned against him. He folded her in his arms, and she sobbed into his chest, turned away and vomited on the porch steps.

Anne ran up to her room and knelt at the side of her bed until she was done crying and then with Philip's help and based on the Rileys' suggestions, she drew out plans for her new outbuildings. She had decided that no corncrib was needed and a toolshed with a Dutch door was a better idea. She had remembered a pen for the goats.

"You still thinking on growing tobacco?" asked Philip. "Lot of folks have given it up you know."

"Probably. But it's a lot of work, I know that, almost every day, very grubby work."

"Maybe you can rent a slave, by the day or week. My family was one of the few not to grow sotweed, thank goodness. I've seen a lot of my friends go broke with the stuff. The price goes up and down like the tides."

She nodded. "What's your advice?"

"I think you should go into town, right now, and talk to the sheriff. That dead man has a lot of friends, powerful friends, and I think he was a member of that new Freemason lodge. Oh, and bring your pistol with you."